Computer systems typically include core services and hardware. From a computer management perspective, these core services and hardware may be viewed as a collection of management objects. Management or remote management of these objects may be provided over a management interface. A traditional management object management approach may use a common information model object manager (CIMOM) as an object manager, or broker, for accessing management objects externally or internally within a computer system. The management objects may be represented by a CIMOM, which is a component of the computer system that provides object management, including exposing interfaces for accessing these objects to entities that reside outside or within the computer system.
Typical computer systems may implement and expose other interfaces to access objects represented in the CIMOM. Some prevalent interfaces include Web Services for Management (WSMAN) for web access and systems management architecture for server hardware—command line protocol (SMASH CLP) for command line access. A bridge may couple these interfaces with the CIMOM. The CIMOM may communicate with the interfaces via the bridge using Common Information Model eXtensible Markup Language (CIM-XML) or a binary interface protocol. In typical implementations, the WSMAN interface may be implemented as a plug-in to the standard web server or as a standalone web server.
An external user may issue a command to a WSMAN interface using a WSMAN protocol, which may be Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) over hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The WSMAN interface may then internally issue the command to the CIMOM, via the bridge, which converts the command from the WSMAN protocol to the CIM-XML protocol or binary interface protocol. Once the command is converted to the CIM-XML protocol or binary interface protocol, the CIMOM may execute the command, generate a response via an appropriate CIM provider and return the response to the WSMAN interface using the CIM-XML protocol or binary interface protocol. The WSMAN interface may then parse and re-code the response from the CIM-XML protocol or the binary interface protocol into the WSMAN protocol. Similar coding and decoding may be performed for a SMASH CLP interface. For example, the SMASH CLP interface may be configured to convert data between the SMASH CLP protocol and the CIM-XML protocol or the binary interface protocol in a similar manner. In embedded systems, where volatile and non-volatile memory requirements and CPU performance are constrained, the use of a bridge and CIMOM leads to inefficiencies.
The CIMOM may be approximately 1.5 MB to 2 MB in size or even larger. In addition, the CIMOM may operate with a Common Information Model (CIM) object repository that provides central storage area for instrumentation or class definition data associated with the management objects. The CIMOM may use the CIM repository when servicing requests from a management application for data regarding management objects. The CIM repository may generally be approximately 5 MB in size. In embedded systems where memory resources are scarce, storing the CIMOM and the CIM repository reduces the remaining memory resources of the embedded system, making the use of the CIMOM and CIM repository undesirable.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure presented herein has been made.